A former estate agent who planned to have a national network of branches has been jailed for nine years after committing fraud worth almost £10m.

Jason Butler, who ran first Homestarter and then Jump Group, used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle which included a collection of supercars, a luxury home in Spain, a speedboat and a portfolio of 96 properties in Leeds.

Butler, 46, masterminded the £9.8m fraud by creating hundreds of false invoices to steal millions of pounds in VAT.

He then tried to hide the scam in a complex trading chain involving companies in the UK, Gibraltar, Spain and the US, an investigation by HMRC revealed.

Butler, who lived in Spain, told HMRC he bought almost £60m worth of personal data, but this was a lie.

In reality he was forging purchase invoices to falsely reclaim VAT and trading very cheap raw data through a complex international supply chain in a bid to hide his crimes.

Eden Noblett, assistant director of Fraud Investigation Service at HMRC, said: “Butler thought he was clever and his scam too sophisticated to be uncovered. But he was not as clever as he believed.

“This was a complex fraud involving offshore companies and moving money internationally. This case should serve as a warning to anyone considering stealing taxpayers’ money.

“No matter how clever and sophisticated you think your fraud is, we will catch you.

“Tax fraud takes money away from the vital public services we all use. Butler stole enough money to pay for more than 500 new NHS nurses.”

Butler controlled a company called Multi Level Media, based in Leeds. He said he bought and sold Payment Protection Insurance customer data from nine UK companies via an international agency which he also controlled, between November 2011 and January 2015.

However, no trade ever took place and Butler had created hundreds of phoney invoices.

Instead he was buying and selling cheap raw data to a series of firms in the UK, who then sold it to a respectable data company in Gibraltar. The data was sold by it to a company in the US, which was also controlled by Butler.

Each step of the transaction chain was arranged and controlled by Butler.

He created this series of transactions to try and hide his fraud by involving several companies, some of which had an established tax history with HMRC.

On paper it appeared the fraudster had paid substantial amounts of VAT. But the purchases were fake and backed up by forged invoices, which he used to falsely reclaim £9,875,806 in VAT.

Butler was arrested by police at Manchester International Airport when he arrived into the UK from Malaga in January 2015.

Last week, Butler was found guilty at Leeds Crown Court of VAT fraud. He has now been sentenced to nine years in prison at the same court by His Honour Judge Jameson QC.

Proceedings are now under way to recover the stolen money.

The estate agency empire that crashed

If Butler were starting out in estate agent today, he would doubtless describe himself as a disruptor.

He launched Homestarter at the age of 22, with the business then taken over by Jump – which Butler also headed.

The business grew to around 30 franchises in Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire, and made much of the fact that it presented a challenge to traditional estate agents, who were said to loathe the business.

It offered vendors a fixed price sale inclusive of financial and legal services. First-time buyers could get on the property ladder with 95% mortgages and with loans for deposits, all arranged by Jump.

Butler, who employed both his parents in the business, was awarded Yorkshire Young Director of the Year by the Institute of Directors.

He had huge ambitions for Jump, planning a network of 80 branches across the UK.

However, in 2004 Jump had to give a series of undertakings to the OFT that it would comply with the Estate Agents Act, and a year later went into administration leaving creditors thousands of pounds out of pocket.

A deal saw Butler buy the assets and form a new company, Jazbut, which has since been dissolved.